In vehicle assembly operations, doors are assembled to a body/side sub-assembly of a Body-In-White (BIW) assembly. The BIW assembly is transferred along the body assembly line on a pallet as parts are assembled to the BIW assembly. Doors are separately assembled and are placed on a door hanging fixture before assembling the door to a door opening defined by the BIW assembly. The assembly process is generally built up based upon a rear body baseline with tolerance stack-ups progressing from the rear. Of course, the body could be built from the front to the rear but this is not the norm. For example, the rear door of a four door vehicle is used to set the front door and is assembled to the body before the front door that is followed by the front fender.
The fit of the front and rear doors to their respective door openings is critical and nonconformance to design specifications can lead to “squeaks and rattles,” wind noise, water leaks, high door opening and closing effort and dust accumulation. Nonconformance can increase material costs for scrap, and can cause increased labor costs for product rework, assembly line downtime, and increased quality control audits.
This disclosure is directed to solving the above problems and other problems as summarized below.